FishExplorer.com Blogs

Frustration

by: Lloyd Tackitt 9/29/2012

Fishing frustration is a deadly disease. When you want to go fishing, but can't for reasons beyond your control, rust begins to form on your essential self. You sit and dream of being on the river, fly rod in hand making a perfect cast, feeling the weight of the rod changing in your hand as it moves back and forth. The fly sails out and begins to settle softly through the air, then...you're back in the chair, frustrated. Sit there a while longer and you feel the water swirling across your legs, soft as silk and cool. You wade towards a spot where you have caught many a fish, begin to cast and then...you're back in your chair.

It's perhaps a little worse when outside your patio door you see the river, constantly there, beckoning. And perhaps a little worse yet when the day is overcast and a soft gentle rain falls. A front is moving through and the air is cool and sweet with the smell of wet leaves and grass. You know the water is a little warmer than the air, a perfect set up for an extraordinary day in the river. You drift off again, feeling the hit on the line as a wild fish suddenly struggles against your line and then...you're back in your chair looking out the glass door as the river looks back in at you, beckoning like a beautiful siren.

What stops you from putting on the vest, picking up the rod, and walking off into that soft sweet water? The most mundane thing in the world, the most average of infirmities brought about not by anything you have done, you are merely a victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Circumstance, and circumstance only has put fishing just out of your reach, and that is perhaps the worst thing of all. You're not paying for bad karma, you can't blame yourself, you can't blame the agent of this dismal demise. There is no blame to allot, there is no enemy to hate and plot against. There is no faint hope of sweet revenge in any distant future.

You sit there, gaze at the river and the soft rain, and know the fish are in a feeding frenzy, but you're bound. So you try to distract your thoughts, you try watching television, but it doesn't work long. Try reading a book, and find you have read three pages and haven't the faintest notion of what you read. You try to back up three pages, only to repeat the futility. You eat, that works for a few minutes, but when you stop eating it creeps back on you. Frustration, oh I know your name.

Trying to push frustration back you search harder for distraction, start teasing your wife, trying to get a rise out of her. It's kind of like fishing, searching the water for a likely spot, tempting her with just the right bait. She rises to the fly and you have her on the hook, you play with the fish, turning it this way and that way. It leaps out of the water in a magnificent roar and suddenly you're back again, only this time you have succeeded in attaining distraction. The fish has turned into your wife, staring at you, jaw taught and fists on hips, fire in her eyes. Uh-oh.

What keeps you in? A mere spider bite on your thigh. A small little speck the first day, a welp the second day, a big red knot the third day and a trip to the doctor. A little surgery, not much, local anesthetic. Doc warns you to keep it clean and dry. You know without asking that wading in the river's fertile waters isn't going to happen, but out of some forlorn plea to the heaven's you ask anyway. His answer "Want to lose the leg?" is cold, merciless, and unappealable. No higher court to seek relief from exists. You're stuck for at least two weeks. An eternity of frustration.

Uh-oh. I would keep writing but I swear I just heard a gun being loaded and it's just me and my frustrated wife at home. Apparently she frustrates easily. Gotta go...

Flyrodn, CO 10/1/2012 1:59:36 PMHeal quickly. It sounds like failure to do so might be shorten your life expectancy!

JKaboom, CO 10/2/2012 3:09:27 PMThat is a real bummer especially with you living on the river... Get well soon. You are right there are several 'Gravity' issues that can keep one from fishing or as you more eloquently stated - "rust begins to form on your essential self". I only got out one day in Sept. due to back problems and I am not real happy...

Lloyd Tackitt (Lloyd Tackitt), TX 10/3/2012 6:36:06 PMDoc said it's looking better. Doesn't have to pack it with gauze now. Couple days ago he packed it with gauze, I walked out to the car where my wife was waiting, opened the door and said "Just so you know, if they ever torture me I'm telling them every thing."

skiman, CO 10/4/2012 12:39:58 PMLloyd...
Why would you keep a gun and ammo where your wife can get it? Is it because a recuperating fisherman might have some kind of death wish...or is it because being frustrated by not being able to fish is far worse than death? Methinks you have endured enough torture for one man! Good Fishing!
Ski

Lloyd Tackitt (Lloyd Tackitt), TX 10/4/2012 1:21:32 PMI married a redhead. She has her own guns. You know the old saying "You can have a gun, or you can have a temper - but not both"? Doesn't apply to redheads.